Race, Social Cohesion and the Changing Politics of Citizenship
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London Review of Education, Vol. 2, No. 3, November 2004 Race, Social Cohesion and the Changing Politics of Citizenship KALBIR SHUKRA Department of Professional and Community Education, Goldsmiths College, UK LES BACK, MICHAEL KEITH, AZRA KHAN Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths College, UK JOHN SOLOMOS Department of Sociology, City University, UK ABSTRACT The relationship between race, social cohesion and citizenship has become an important issue in recent political and policy debates. In this paper these questions are explored in the context of the changing forms of ethnic minority political engagement and participation that have evolved in the past two decades. We suggest that there are growing tensions in policy debates about the boundaries and limits of multicultural policies, particularly focused around the issue of social cohesion. Race, Politics and Democratic Governance In recent years we have seen a growing debate in the public sphere and in academic circles about the relationship between democratic institutions and the realities of multiculturalism in British society. This has often been linked to concerns, expressed even more vociferously after the urban violence of 2001 and events of September 11, about whether Britain has moved ‘too far’ in the direction of multiculturalism and diversity for the good of political and social cohesion. Such debates have been given added currency in the aftermath of the comments by Trevor Phillips, current head of the Commission for Racial Equality, that multiculturalism may now be a problematic policy agenda because it ‘suggests separateness’ (The Observer, 4 April 2004). They have also been shaped to some extent by the politicisation of asylum and immigration issues over the past decade or so. All in all such developments have produced a climate that some have compared to the aftermath of Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of blood’ speech in 1968. It is of some importance in this climate to engage in a reasoned debate about the changing politics of multiculturalism and citizenship. It is with this overarching concern in mind that we want to engage with these debates from a critical perspective by drawing on our recent research on a project that focused on the changing forms of ethnic minority political partici- pation in contemporary Britain. In an attempt to move beyond the crude criteria of voter turnout and opinion polls that characterises much political analysis, we set out to identify and ISSN 1474-8460 print; ISSN 1474-8479 online/04/030187-09 © 2004 Institute of Education, University of London DOI: 10.1080/1474846042000302825 188 K. Shukra et al. examine the less recognised as well as traditional political stages on which ethnic minority activists and organisations intervene on issues of interest to them. Our work considered the nature of ethnic minority political participation in Birmingham and the London boroughs of Lewisham and Tower Hamlets. We conceptualised these case studies as part of a formal public sphere of politics. Added to these, we explored what we called the alternative public sphere of voluntary and community sector activity, including for example the work of ethnic minority housing associations, arts projects and campaigns around deaths in custody and refugees. We also recognised the growing importance of umbrella organisations that work closely with both the formal and alternative spheres and are yet sited somewhere between the formal and the alternative public spheres, such as the National Assembly Against Racism, Operation Black Vote and the National Civil Rights Movement—these we conceptualised as occupying the space of a transitional sphere of political participation (Shukra et al., 2004). Although educa- tion was not a specific theme in our research, in the course of our observations and data gathering we observed and examined debates about multiculturalism and issues about the educational experiences of ethnic minorities as they were staged and contested in all three spheres: amongst community and voluntary organisations, within ethnic minority coalition groups and across the main arenas of governance. As academics with a background of research and writing on race, racism and black politics, we embarked on this project intensely aware of the history of ethnic minority interventions and debates about multicultural and antiracist education policies. This paper is based on the debates and data relating to education that emerged in the course of conducting the project. From Integration to Social Cohesion Shortly after we began our research project there were outbreaks of social unrest in Burnley, Bradford and other towns in the north of England. Whereas the primary focus of urban disorder in the 1980s and 1990s had been on the central role of Caribbean young men, these twenty-first century riots were noted for featuring as central participants young Asian men [1]. As before, the riots were met with a combination of hard policing, race relations measures and official inquiries into the immediate and underlying causes of the riots (Cantle, 2001; Burnley Task Force, 2001; Denham, 2001; Ouseley, 2001; Oldham Independent Review, 2001). The investigators produced quite similar findings and emphasized the role of conflicts between different majority and minority communities in shaping the conflicts. It was in this context that official responses to the riots emphasised the need for measures aimed at fostering social and community cohesion, and this theme has since become primary policy driver across New Labour social policy. What had previously been termed integration was now called cohesion. Kalra (2002) captures some of the meanings of cohesion as a social policy category when he argues that it refers to communities where: ᭹ There is a common vision and a sense of belonging for all communities. ᭹ The diversity of people’s different backgrounds and circumstances are appreciated and positively valued. ᭹ Those from different backgrounds have similar life opportunities. ᭹ Strong and positive relationships are being developed between people from different backgrounds in the workplace, in schools and within neighbourhoods. (Local Government Association et al., 2002:6). The question was whether such cohesion was to be achieved through communities themselves arriving at compromises through the everyday hurly burly of formal and informal contact or through New Labour institutions defining the citizenship and The Changing Politics of Citizenship 189 Britishness that people would have to sign up to. Put crudely, could social cohesion be used for progressive ends or was it inherently assimilationist? It had already become evident in New Labour’s approach to asylum seekers and refugees that there was an uneasy balance in official rhetoric between a language of assimilation and integration that harked back to the 1960s and a language of community cohesion that was looking for ways to move beyond the 1980s multicultural orthodoxy (Back et al., 2002). Most of the assimilationist language came from the government itself, particularly in its policy response to immigration and events of September 11. The yearning for moving forwards rather than backwards was expressed by a wide range of policy makers and thinkers, including Herman Ouseley (2001) and Trevor Phillips (2004). Phillips in particular expressed a wish for Britain to move on from what he saw as divisive 1980s style multiculturalist policies (The Guardian, 28 May 2004). Another intervention in these debates came in 2004 in Prospect magazine and The Guardian. It was inspired by David Goodhart’s (2004) argument that Britain has become ‘too diverse’ through immigration to maintain a welfare state. Goodhart had criticised multiculturalism and posited it against a more desirable monoculturalism. In the absence of an alternative, multiculturalism had become accepted as the preferred option of leftists and so it was widely viewed as Phillips’ responsibility as head of the Commission for Racial Equality to defend multiculturalism. When he did not, he caused a panic amongst the growing black middle classes and their allies as people tried to fathom what his statements could possibly have been intended to achieve. A month later, Phillips clarified his position as one of arguing against multiculturalism for its limitations and failures in integrating ethnic minority communities and that he intended his comments might produce a constructive debate. That Phillips comments caused such a furore was in itself quite revealing. His views not only appeared to echo the concerns of the right, but also opened old wounds, increasing fears that assimilationist style policies might be reconstructed. In the 1960s and 1970s an assimilationist approach to integration dominated government thinking and local authority education policy and practice. The Commonwealth Immigrants Advisory Council—set up in 1962 to advise the Home Secretary on matters relating to the welfare of immigrants and integration matters—promoted the idea that cultural differences obstructed integration. The CIAC presented the idea that the problem of Commonwealth immigrants and their children was that they were visibly distinguishable by the colour of their skin with backgrounds from societies whose habits and customs are very different from those in Britain. It was in this assimilationist framework that education policy locally took the form of authorities dispersing Asian children geographically by bussing them from their homes out of the immediate area in order to maintain